The first thing to recognize is that this is not a problem of recent vintage. The critical problem of Israel as the called people of God was their disobedience to the will of God. In fact the remarkable thing about the Hebrew Scriptures is that they make no effort to cover this up. This problem was not resolved with the coming of Christ and the formation of the church among the new disciples. Reading the Gospels one quickly recognizes all the common human characteristics of people in any community. All of the disciples argue about who is the greatest, James and John attempt to use the influence of their mother to secure positions of power, at times some of the disciples more clearly represent Satan than they do God, greed seems to direct some of their decisions, betrayal exists within the community, some are ready to use violence to enforce conformity, they continually seem to misunderstand both Jesus and the message he proclaims and at critical moments they lose all courage and run for cover. It would not take a great deal of effort to describe parallel incidents in the history of the church.
SMcCutchan